9-12-02, Danny McBride
911, 411, 611, 311
By Danny McBride
IPS Features
Emergency. Information. Repair. Rock Band.
Thanks to TV and radio, September 11th lives on. We can relive every gut-wrenching minute of it. Watch!! There it goes again!!
Except me. I must be some kind of freak. I can’t watch one more talking head tell me the significance of it all and what it means to our future. Blah blah blah. The future is ours to shape, if we have the nerve, and if we care about what happens to the world our children will live in.
But we’re abdicating the responsibility to TV News Anchors and those who are the regular guests on all the talk shows. The same people are always on. If they know so damned much, why don’t they need to be in a secure location? (Note to Dick Cheney: Peek-a-boo!! I know where you are.)
See, here’s the thing. What went down last year was hideous beyond belief. Using the Kevin Bacon formula, every one of us knows someone who knows someone affected personally, if they themselves were not actually affected personally. Two of my sister’s neighbors were on American flight #11. She used to walk their dog for them. Now their house is up for sale.
But here’s the thing. I keep hearing comparisons with Pearl Harbor- -before my time- -so I checked with dear old Dad. He remembers that event as if it were yesterday.
One of the great chasms that now exists that didn’t exist then is the feeling of a united purpose. We’ve all heard the transcription of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s speech (and if you’re old enough, you heard it live) in which he starts out by saying “Yesterday, December 7, 1941- -a date that will live in infamy” and which he concludes by saying that “we will gain the inevitable triumph- -so help us God.” You know the speech.
We have all also heard the recordings of Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s speech saying “We will fight them on the beaches, on the landing places, on the farms and in the cities. We will never surrender.” Quick- -give me a line from a George Bush speech from this past year. Yeah, I know: “Wanted Dead or Alive.” Or how about this: Dick Cheney was on Meet The Press with Tim Russert last week. Can you quote anything he said?
[Note: Churchill only gave that speech in Parliament. He was too busy with the evacuation of Dunkirk to recreate it for broadcast, so actor Norman Shelley gave the radio version. And we’ve got a guy barbequing ribs on a grill in Texas and playing golf. What’s wrong with this picture?]
One of the greatest reasons our side rallied against the threat of annihilation during World War II is that men of eloquence spoke compellingly about what had happened, what we were going to do about it, and, without hesitation, that we were going to win. Nobody was interviewed on a golf course and then said “Now watch this drive” as Bush did on August 4th. Playing golf while there’s a war to win? Unthinkable. But these are the mixed messages we’re getting. “There are some very bad men out there- -very bad men. And I’ll get right back to being in charge of handling it all after I- -hand me that putter- -play a few more holes of golf.” Hey George!! We’re dyin’ here. Can you picture Roosevelt playing golf?- -Wait- -that’s not really the mental image I wanted to conjure up- -but you get my drift. And Churchill was even too busy to give his own speeches. We need this same kind of resolve. We’re not getting it here. Tony Blair can be stirring, but we don’t get enough of him on TV here- -unless you watch C-SPAN when they run the House of Commons in the middle of the night. We really do have a clandestine war to win, with the same resolve the country mustered after Pearl Harbor. (Country Mustard? Sorry.)
Unfortunately I know more about the new fall line-up and Everybody Loves Raymond than I do about what we really need to know. This has been a somber week. But we continue to be inundated with the hype: “Complete coverage without commercial interruption, but first this word about Country Mustard.”
The most uplifting words spoken this week, and repeated many times, were written 139 years ago by Abraham Lincoln, for delivery at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863. That would be the “Four score and seven years ago” speech known as the Gettysburg Address. (Say, do you know Lincoln’s Gettysburg address? Yes, but it’s only a postal box.)
We need an impassioned spokesperson to fire this country up to where we are ready to fight them on the beaches or on the farms or in the cities.
I’m sorry this day had to happen, and I’m glad it’s over. We have one hundred senators who almost all think they should be president. Fire me up. Make me go enlist. Make me know that you’re not playing golf.
Otherwise I may have to get up and do it myself. “611? We need to get fixed.”
Okay, I’m going to go listen to the new 311 CD.
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